Using x86 Binary Packages on a 64 bit Platform

Performance-wise, there is probably nothing wrong with installing 32 bit binaries (built for x86 platforms) on an x86_64 (64 bit) system. However, there is an architecture test made during the installation of SSM that will result in a bad build unless the test is removed.

  1. Edit /home/armnlib/ssm/environment-base_1.0_linux24-i386/.ssm.d/pre-publish to comment out or remove the line containing can_publish.sh.
  2. Log out and log back in.
  3. Republish the package: ssm unpublish -p environment-base_1.0_linux24-i386; ssm publish -p environment-base_1.0_linux24-i386

When building for a 32 bit target on a 64 bit machine, there will be an incompatibility between the binary distribution structure and the $ARCH and $EC_ARCH environment variables (the latter are defined using `uname -s` and will likely contain reference to the x86_64 platform architecture. To avoid this problem, you will need to force $ARCH and $EC_ARCH to read Linux_i686 in /home/armnlib/ssm/all/share/env_univ/.profile

  1. Edit /home/armnlib/ssm/all/share/env_univ/.profile by replacing HOSTTTYPE=$( uname -m | sed s/_/-/ ) with HOSTTYPE=i686.
  2. Log out and log back in.

TIP: Remember that most of the rest of the installation instructions are written for x86-64 builds, so you will have to replace the architecture-dependent identifiers on the binary SSM package names with i386.